Introduction

56
Vanessa Mangione
her perception that a compliance with the symbolic will end in a life full of oppression
and ultimately in the loss of the self in patriarchal traditions. In order to
prevent this from happening, she needs to stand up against her aunt Mrs Reed,
who acts as a representative of the patriarchal system. Thus, Jane confronts her:
Speak I must; I had been trodden on severely, and must turn; but how?
What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies
and launched them into this blunt sentence:
“I am not deceitful!”…
“I am glad you are no relation of mine … You think I have no feelings and
that I can live without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so and
you have no pity … And that punishment you made me suffer because
your wicked boy struck me – knocked me down for nothing … You are
deceitful!” (31-32)
Jane tells the reader that
Ere I had finished this reply my soul began to expand, to exult, with the
strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible
bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty.
Not without cause was this sentiment; Mrs Reed looked frightened. (31)
The child Jane already feels that she must stand up against the injustice and discrimination
that she experienced at her aunt’s house, despite her youth and indoctrinated
submissiveness. Jane’s semiotic side cannot be fully suppressed and surfaces
over and over again. A dialogue between passion and reason, feeling and
judgment, impulse and conscience, fire and ice starts.
3.2.2 Female Education: or the Oppression of Female Sexuality
After the outburst Mrs Reed sends Jane to Lowood School; a place where female
sexuality is systematically diminished and repressed. Mr Brocklehurst, the director
of the school, acts as an example of tyrannical and cruel male authority. He is the
embodiment of institutionalised oppression that is based on class and sexual
prejudice, a representative of the symbolic. He represents the abusiveness and
oppression that women have to endure in a patriarchal society.
As various critics have noticed, Brocklehurst is presented as the evil wolf in
Charles Perrault’s “The Little Red Riding Hood.” 34 He is a mixture of the devil
himself and the evil wolf, a devourer of everything innocent. Gilbert and Gubar
have stated how Mr Brocklehurst is the perfect example of the “Victorian superego”
(260), because of his description in evident phallic terms during Jane’s and
his first encounter:
34 See Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Cyndy Hendershot, and Huang Mei among others.